Friday, December 26, 2008

Hackers deface Eastern Rail website

Kolkata Amid growing tension between India and Pakistan, the official website of the Eastern Railway (ER) was hacked and messages were posted claiming that it was done to avenge India’s alleged violation of the Pakistani air space.

On Wednesday morning, the official site of ER — www.easternrailway.gov.in — was found corrupted with a large number of messages put up by the hackers in its scroll section. The scroll which normally consists of official announcements was flooded with notes like “Cyber war has been declared on Indian cyberspace by Whackerz-Pakistan” followed by “Indians hit hard by Zaid Hamid” and “You are hacked.”

On clicking the messages in the scroll, it opened into a new window which claimed that “Mianwalian of Whackerz” have hacked the site in response to the Pakistan air space violation .

When contacted, ER officials seemed to be unaware of the entire incident and the site was not blocked till 11.40 am.

The website, however, started to function normally after 12 noon. “This is a case of SQL injection. An investigation has been ordered and a report will be submitted within 24 hours. Technically, this cannot be called hacking as our database or confidential information could not accessed. We have, however, taken all necessary precautions,” said Samir Goswami, CPRO, ER.

The Railway officials primarily traced the root of injections to Toronto. One official of the ER said that the websites have cyber security certificate from US-based Thawte.

“We have informed the service provider and will likely get responses from them after 24 hours,” said the spokesperson of ER.